Prayer and Nonduality 「神我合一」之下怎能祈禱？

Prayer and Nonduality
by Jay Michaelson
Tikkun November/December 2009

Jay Michaelson is the author of Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism, from which this article was adapted.  Michaelson advocates nonduality---God and us, everything indeed, are one.  But prayer (we pray to God) clearly assumes duality (the twoness of God and us).  This article addresses this problem of conflict between nonduality and prayer.  The following quotes highlight the main points:  

God does not exist---but is Existence itself.
"All is one."
Logically, if God is infinite, then everything is God.

Nonduality...But if there is no self, what is there?

A Buddhist would say everything is an empty play of conditions: ...genetics, ...learned behaviours, and so on.  A nondual Jew or Christian uses the word "God" to refer to those conditions.

Not just the language of prayer but its fundamental assumptions are rigorously personalistic and dualistic; it implies, and sometimes actually states, that "I" am here and you, God, are there, and I am asking you to do things in the world.

...ready nondualistic answers to the traditional theological problem of prayer:
(1) In the contemplative mode: prayer fills the mind with salutary reflections on beneficence and grace, circumscribing the selfish inclination;
(2) ecstatic practice: prayer as uniting with God magically by means of words, song, movement...

But all this seems to miss the point of why we pray in the first place.  Transforming prayer into meditation or magic or self-reflection turns it into something other than prayer, which has to do with the yearnings of the heart.  ...prayer is, at its core, devotionalistic in nature.  ...a time for the heart to open.  ...Devotion implies a devoted-to.  It implies duality.

...traditional prayer is intellectually incoherent.  If everything happens as it must, rather than as it should, then what is the point of wishing really hard for it to be otherwise?

Ironically, when nondual contemplation actually succeeds...dualistic prayer language suddenly flows much freer...illusion of separation drops away.  So too do inhibition and the pretension of knowledge.  A great "I don't know" replaces the arrogant claims to metaphysical certainty.  It is the negative theology of the Cloud of Unknowing, the limits of reason according to Kant, the limits of language according to Wittgenstein, the mystery of Being according to Hegel and Heidegger.  The "I don't know" is the absurdity of Zen, the transrational of Ken Wilber...And so prayer flows from surrender---chiefly the surrender of "I."  ...It is a Divine role play,  ...This is nondual prayer...


祈禱與非二元論

"Prayer and Nonduality" 一文載於前進派 (progressive) 猶太教期刊 Tikkun。作者 Jay Michaelson 著有《一切皆是神：非二元猶太教的激進路徑》。他倡議非二元猶太教，即視神與人為一、一切為一。在非二元論之下，祈禱構成很大的問題，因為人向神祈禱明顯假設我、神二分之二元論。這篇文章就是要解決這個問題。

目前有兩大類解答方式：祈禱作為默想、祈禱作為狂喜活動。祈禱作為默想，目的是讓默想者的心靈充滿感恩與慈悲，從而征服自私的本性。祈禱作為狂喜活動，是指以獨特的言詞、音樂、及身體動作神秘地與神聯合。

作者指出，這兩個答案都忽略了一個簡單的問題：我們為何祈禱？祈禱是內心的呼求，是心靈的倘開，是一種奉獻。而奉獻是有對象的，即假設二元論。

作者提出，如果非二元祈禱成功，二元祈禱語言反而更暢通。我們明白到沒有「我」，是神在做角色扮演，而兩個角色的互動是需要對白的。在非二元祈禱裡，「我」被放下，分別心便可消除。知識的抑壓性和假裝也會消失，不再傲慢地以為自己擁有形而上的肯定，而是被一個大大的「我不知」取代。這就是康德的理性的界限，維根斯坦的語言的界限，黑格爾和海德格爾的存在的神秘性，與及禪宗點出的荒謬性。